Solution implemented to automate browser interactions for filling web forms. Developed for the Office for Quality Assurance using Java, Selenium Web Driver and Hibernate...

1. Operationalization of a solution to automate web
forms insertions in the Office for Quality
Assessment of the Sport Sciences School of Rio
Maior
Pedro Sobreiro, Teresa Bento & Rita Santos-Rocha @ESDRM
Santarém, 06-02-2014

2. Agenda
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Why this project
Approach adopted for development
Components used
Examples
Results
Conclusions

3. Why this project?
• Lack of resources and the need of inserting
data in web forms of A3ES for all the teachers
and curricular units of the ESDRM;
• Lack of time to insert and rigid time stamp to
develop the tasks;
• Repetitive human tasks and prone to human
errors;
• Information related to curricular units and
teachers already inserted in databases;
A3ES - Agência de avaliação e acreditação do ensino superior

4. Why this project?
• Solution develop with support and positive
feedback of top management of ESDRM;
• The head of the Office for Quality Assessment
give the conditions for the solution
development and supported the initiative;
• The internal support and confidence was
fundamental for the development of the
solution and for commitment to get work
done;

5. Approach adopted
• No money to buy a solution leaded to the
adoption of open source solution and the
exclusion of other options;
• Initially was tested iMacros, a free solution for
basic features, but with the development of
the project was needed additional features;
• Selenium as open source became the only
option to develop the solution to automate;

6. Methods
• The solution was develop using Selenium as
an interface to Firefox Web Browser;
• Database adopted for warehousing the data
was H2 (Hibernate) interfaced using the driver
manager jdbc on the client side;
• The plug-ins used were: (1) selenium IDE
1.9.0; (2) selenium IDE: Java Formatters 1.9.0;

7. Browser Automation
• The automation was implemented using
several Firefox plug-ins as interface to the
application developed in Java:
• Selenium plug-ins: Selenium IDE 1.9.0 and
Selenium IDE Java Formatters;

8. Browser Automation
• Additionally were installed third part plug-ins to
facilitate the web pages analysis;
• The automation of the interaction was supported
with a mixed identification, using TAGS and ID’s;
• Firebug was used for monitoring in real time the
web page elements;
• Firepath for editing XPATH and CSS3 expressions,
facilitating the tests with web page elements;

9. Selenium components
• IDE interface for saving macros and testing the
initial interaction.
• IDE gives a ground base and facilitates the
development of the application to interact
with the web form;
• Webdriver gives access to the web browser as
remote control, and permits “driving” the
browser;

10. Selenium IDE
• The comands for automating have two basic
elements: command and target;
• Basic commands: open url; type;
verifyElementPresent; click; clickAndWait;
@driver.get(@base_url + "/si/iportal.php/auth/login/lang/pt/")
@driver.find_element(:id, "portal_username").clear
@driver.find_element(:id, "portal_username").send_keys "username"
@driver.find_element(:id, "portal_password").clear
@driver.find_element(:id, "portal_password").send_keys "password"
@driver.find_element(:id, "ext-gen23").click
# Terminou a autenticação
@driver.find_element(:id, "ext-gen531").click
@driver.find_element(:xpath, "//ul[@id='ext-gen571']/div/li[3]/div/img").click

11. WebDriver
• Simulate access to the browser as an end user;
• The development enviroment used:
• Programming IDE: IDEA Intellij
• JUnit to drive the tests and asserts during the
tests;
• Selenium WebDriver;

12. WebDriver main class

13. WebDriver sample code

14. Webdriver database access

15. Results
• Reduction of 90% of the estimated times for
inserting manually the data;
• 19 hours to inserting data non stop, reduced
to 90 minutes – was assumed times for
waiting for browser availability before sending
data;
• Reduction of error due to the elimination of
human insertions;

16. Conclusions
• Web browser automation solutions can help
reducing time in repetitive tasks by human
resources;
• Can be used automating other manual
insertions to web browsers;
• Reduce handovers and non value tasks,
releasing human resources to other areas;

17. References
• Selenium Project. (2012). Selenium Documentation.
Retrieved from
http://seleniumhq.org/docs/book/Selenium_Documentatio
n.pdf
• Burns, D. (2012). Selenium 2 Testing Tools Beginners Guide :
Learn to use Selenium testing tools from scratch.
Birmingham; Mumbai: Packt Publisihing Ltd
• Gundecha, U. (2012). Selenium Testing Tools Cookbook.
Birmingham: Packt Pub.
• Niemeyer, P. (2005). Learning Java (3rd ed.). Sebastopol, CA:
O’Reilly.
• Bauer, C., & King, G. (2006). Java Persistence with Hibernate
(Revised.). Manning Publications.